Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - February 27, 2022, Winnipeg, Manitoba SUNDAY SPECIAL A4 SUNDAY FEBRUARY 27, 2022 SUNDAY SPECIAL EDITOR: KELLY TAYLOR ● KELLY.TAYLOR@FREEPRESS.MB.CA ● WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM ‘W e weren’t expecting you yet, you’re gonna have to give us a few minutes,” Linda Frig shouts from a back area where’s she busily cutting chicken breasts, when a reporter arrives early for a scheduled interview at Frig’s Natural Meats & More, her and her husband John’s namesake butch- er-and-grocery mart at 3515 Main St. in West St. Paul. “Take all the time you need,” we yell back, opting not to argue with a person wielding a cleaver and sporting a blood- stained smock that wouldn’t look out of place in an episode of Dexter. When Linda’s daughter, Michelle Mansell, who had been grinding meat in another part of the store, joins us 10 min- utes later, she immediately apologizes for the delay. They lost their full-time butcher a week ago, she explains, which has left them short-handed. Not that there’s anything particularly new about that; if there is one thing Mansell has learned since her parents founded Frig’s, which, as the “Natural” in the name implies, specializes in ethically raised, chemical- and antibiotic-free goods, 20 years ago, it’s that when it comes to running a small, inde- pendent business, “you roll up your sleeves and do what you gotta do.” Describing her mother as Exhibit A, she throws an arm around her shoulders, boasting on her behalf that at the age of 75 she continues to work six days a week at the store, from eight in the morning until six at night. That’s not all; when she’s done carving ribs and packaging ground beef, she heads back to the family farm, about a 40-minute commute, to spend a couple more hours bottle-feeding lambs and calves before turning in for the night. “Customers are always asking her when she’s going to retire, to which she answers, this is her retirement.” ● ● ● Mansell’s paternal grandparents, Steven and Elizabeth Frig, both hailed from Silver- wood, Sask., where their respective parents moved to from Hungary in the mid-1920s as part of Canada’s homesteading initiative, which offered European immigrants free land in remote parts of Western Canada. In 1950, Steven and Elizabeth, who wed in 1933 and had 12 children, left Silverwood for Manitoba, where they had purchased a 300-acre grain farm north of Petersfield. John, Mansell’s dad, was born and raised on his parents’ property. As a boy he wasn’t particularly interested in farming, mind you, so as soon as he was old enough, he headed west to Calgary, where he landed work as a carpenter. The Alberta city is also where he met Linda. The two tied the knot in 1983 and would probably still be living in Calgary, Linda asserts, if it hadn’t been for a tragic farm accident in 1984 that claimed the life of John’s brother Joe. “(Joe) had been doing everything for his parents, pretty much, and after he died, my husband decided we should move to Manitoba, to give his mom and dad a hand,” says Linda, who, at the time, was managing a department at Woolco around raising Michelle, their only child. John and Linda purchased a house in Garden City. He split his time between the farm and construction jobs in the city while she caught on at a nearby Woolco, later Walmart. Things took a turn when John’s father died in 1988. Unable to manage on her own, his mother announced it was her intention to sell the farm. John said he and Linda would buy it and move there permanently, to ensure it stayed in the family for future generations. “Chickens, it all started with chickens,” Mansell says with a chuckle. Anybody who knows her dad, whom she describes as looking like Santa Claus “on a good day” is aware he’s all about eating healthily without spending a fortune. Before long, he was selling their free-range birds to others in the area for little to no profit, a pattern that continued until 2002, when an accountant friend told him about a vacant retail space, the former home of Middlechurch Meats, in a tiny, Main Street strip mall two minutes north of the Perimeter. “By then we’d added pigs and turkeys to the mix and he had been talking about open- ing his own butcher shop for a couple years already,” Linda pipes in. “But because he was always going on about one pipedream or another, I didn’t pay too much attention, I just let him yammer. Of course, if I’d known 20 years ago what I know now, I would have put the skids on it. I mean, who’s stupid enough to open a store at the age of 55 when they already have a farm to run?” (Linda doesn’t notice her daughter, stand- ing to the side with a smirk on her face, nodding her head to the left.) ● ● ● If Mansell has heard it once, she’s heard it a thousand times; how Frig’s Natural Meats wouldn’t have made it past Year 2 without the support of a neighbourhood on the com- plete other side of Winnipeg. Her mother never did determine how the store, which also sells a variety of grocery items, many of which are organic, came on their radar, but their most loyal customers early on were almost exclusively from St. Vital, people who would have passed ump- teen other grocery stores on their way to West St. Paul. “Obviously, there was a demand for local, naturally-raised meat,” Mansell says, “since so many people were willing to drive 45 minutes or whatever out of their way to get here.” Their customer-base has definitely expanded since then, primarily through word of mouth. On the morning we visited, Michelle chatted with a woman who’s been making a twice-a-month trek from Oak- bank for a dozen years, and a person from Wolseley who pops in whenever she’s on her way to Selkirk to visit her parents. Also, a fellow who took the Perimeter Highway from Charleswood to get there, became so caught up listening to Linda and Michelle tell their tale, he left his purchase on the counter, only to double back inside after he’d started his car and realized, hey, where were his steaks? Mansell, a mother of two, was living in Calgary two years ago when her dad called to say Linda had suffered a stroke. She hopped on the next plane to Winnipeg, leav- ing her husband in charge of their kids, and spent the next six months splitting her time between here and there. Despite having lit- tle to no retail experience, and zero butcher- ing skills, she did what she could to help out, not that she didn’t have a ready-and-willing mentor at her side. “Are you kidding?” she says, raising her eyebrows when asked if her mom stayed home during her recovery phase. “I think she missed six days of work, tops. Most of our customers assumed she and Dad had gone somewhere warm, and were like, ‘Lin- da, did you enjoy your week off?’ the next time they saw her.” After continuing to visit Winnipeg on and off, Michelle decided in December 2020 it was time to “(poop) or get off the pot.” She arrived right before the holidays — by then, her son Dallas, now 20, had already made the move, and was assisting his grandpar- ents on the farm — followed by her husband a few months later. Their daughter, 22, remained in Calgary but helps out at Frig’s in the summer and around Christmas. Michelle describes her present-day role as “learning everything Mom already knows.” Additionally, she’s responsible for pre-made meals such as hamburger stew, bison chili and shepherd’s pie that stock a stand-up freezer steps away from the cash register. Another of her “duties” is dispelling the myth that their prices are inordinately higher than what you’d find at large retail chains. Last summer, for example, when sales at Frig’s were down 50 per cent largely owing to road construction, a person on a West St. Paul Facebook group urged area residents to support the store. Some- body shot back sales weren’t slow because one couldn’t access the parking lot, it was “because you have to mortgage your house to shop there.” That was when Michelle entered the conversation, noting she had a a Canadian chain’s flyer on the table in front of her, and not only was Frig’s stewing beef almost a dollar cheaper per pound that week, their chicken breasts were less expensive by almost $1.50 per pound, too. “It all goes back to my dad’s philosophy about making sure people get good food at a fair price,” she says. “Every once in a while I’ll say to Mom we should maybe raise the price of this or that by a dime to keep pace with feeding costs etc. She’ll look at me and say, ‘You’re nothing but a crook!’ and mean it.” The Frigs, who no longer raise chickens but do supply the store with lamb and black angus beef from their farm, don’t have any- thing special planned for their milestone, 20th anniversary, certainly not a well-de- served getaway. Mansell says her dad, 75, continually goes on about how he plans to work until he’s 95 “at least,” and still talks about opening a second outlet in Winnipeg. As for her mom, well, she already knows precisely what she’s going to do if and when she tires of chop- ping bacon. She is originally from England, having lived there till she was 11, and when the day comes, she’s going to park a rocking chair near Frig’s front door, next to a box filled with bones for dogs, and do her best impression of the Queen, by sipping tea and greeting customers, most of whom she knows on a first-name basis. “I guess it’ll work out OK,” her daughter says, preparing to ring in another purchase. “At least if things get crazy, I can always tell her to park her cup and give me a hand.” David Sanderson writes about Winnipeg-centric restaurants and businesses david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca DAVID SANDERSON Frig’s Natural Meats & More has become a West St. Paul mainstay, and 20 years in, it’s not going anywhere The meat of the matter SPICE OF LIFE FROM the get-go, Linda Frig, co-owner of Frig’s Natural Meats & More, has made the store’s hugely popular pepperettes and sausages from scratch. Her daughter, Michelle Mansell, says customers who’ve been shop- ping there for years have figured out a way to determine what sort of mood Linda was in, the morning or afternoon she was in the kitchen. “Our regulars have been known to come in and say, ‘Linda must have been pissed off last week, the pepperettes were a little on the spicy side,’” she says with a chuckle, responding, “It is freaking true,” when her mom yells, “That’s a bald-faced lie,” from the other side of the room. “I’ve seen it myself,” Mansell continues. “She’ll be back there grumbling about something and grab a big handful of spices and toss ‘em into a bowl. I’ll be like, ‘Uh-oh, things are going to be a bit on the hot side, today.’” — David Sanderson JESSICA LEE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS JESSICA LEE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Mansell was busy grinding meat when the reporter arrived. JESSICA LEE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Michelle Mansell (left) and mother Linda Frig, who is still going strong at 75. JESSICA LEE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS These little piggies… are ready for butchering. JESSICA LEE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Frig’s recipes are carefully preserved in a notebook. JESSICA LEE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Ossobucco cuts of beef are among the products at Frig’s. JESSICA LEE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Archito Quisumbing, a butcher at Frig’s, breaks down a carcass. JESSICA LEE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Workers process the day’s selection of meats. JESSICA LEE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS JESSICA LEE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Frig’s Natural Meats & More on Main Street, just north of the Perimeter High- way, for 20 years. JESSICA LEE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Mansell shows off some bacon in the smoker at Frig’s. Michelle Mansell, daughter of owners John and Linda Frig, says customers can tell what kind of mood her mother was in that day by the degree of spiciness in the pepperettes. Linda denies the claim. Frig’s prides itself on decent food at a decent price. Mansell says she often has to dispel misconcep- tions that her prices are higher than city stores. Photos by Jessica Lee Winnipeg Free Press ;